


Silently the Senses

by Aldebaran



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Aldebaran has been watching too many streams, But not to him, Erik POV, F/M, the most unreliable narrator ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:59:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26507851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aldebaran/pseuds/Aldebaran
Summary: She had first come to him as sound.
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40





	Silently the Senses

**Author's Note:**

> with thanks to everyone who bit by bit, with incredibly tender kindness, has been coaxing me slowly from my lair

She had first come to him as sound. He had caught a fragment, a glint, the tiniest hint of that voice in the jumble of noise produced by the chorus, remade for the new season. Somewhere in that jangling tumult, one voice rose, clear, a shaft of light piercing the darkness. Untrained, raw and unrefined, glittering like a vein of pure gold amidst rough sediment.

He was captivated. Instantly. He waited, breathless, until the dismal rehearsal arrangements gave her another chance to shine again amongst the dross. In the closing song, he had it. He had her. The quiet little songbird, Christine. And he knew he had never heard a voice like this before, and would likely never hear one again.

This was the voice to bring his music to life. And he must, somehow, become her teacher.

Sound was first. And then came sight, although sight only mattered at the time as a means of identifying the source of the sound, the voice, that his spirit would sing through someday.

For a long time, the voice, her voice, was enough. Seeing her meant the voice would follow.

It was after he became her subtle teacher that he realized he had come to relish sounds other than her singing voice.

Her speaking voice became important too, and not just the warp and weft of it, the changing tones of it. He became genuinely interested in what she had to say. Her news of the day, her thoughts on various matters, her…feelings. Her worries and woes, her concerns, her boundless caring for other people. He could never be bothered to truly learn who the other people were, but her capacity to care, truly care, never ceased to amaze him.

It was somewhat later that he realized…other sounds besides her spoken and singing voice had come to matter to him. Her indrawn breaths of surprise and delight when he presented her with each new piece to master. Her laughter at some droll tidbit or the other shared between the two of them. Her hum of contentment when he told her how well she was progressing, or that it was time to move on to another lesson, as she had mastered the current one. Even her grief-stricken muffled tears for her lost father. 

And astonishingly and most dearly, the small disappointed sighs that left her lips when she arrived at her dressing room, calling for him and thinking he was not there. 

Her lips…

He had often not answered immediately, because the sight of her had become very important, very dear, in some way he did not quite understand then. When she opened the door and entered the dressing room, her eyes aglow, her hair full and loosely tossed about her shoulders, moving with the lithe grace of a dancer but even more striking and lovely and urgently graceful simply because she was Christine….he often found he could not speak though she called for him.

He had to take control of his being and breath on more than one occasion, summon words back from wherever they had flown to answer her plaintive calls to him, to her Angel. Though his silence was never purposeful, there was something deep within him that reveled in how bereft she sounded. 

She…missed him. She longed…for him.

And he began to know that he longed for her, too.

Sound and sight were all he had, trapped beyond the mirror, trapped behind the mask, trapped within his ruin of a face. For her, he could exist as a being of one sense only, solely a voice. 

Never to be seen. Certainly, never… to be touched.

Though he longed to touch her. Her shining hair, her perfect face. Those lips which sang so sweetly. Her graceful hands. The silk and tulle of her gown, which hugged her slim waist and revealed the slender ivory column of her neck. 

He longed to touch her and know for fact that which he believed—that his hands were formed to fit to her curves, that he and she had been designed and destined each for the other.

Except—his design was flawed. She must never see him, let alone touch him.

And he…must never touch her. 

Never be close enough to touch her. To feel the heat of her through the silk, to feel the strength and suppleness of those dancer’s limbs. To know the silk of her own skin beneath his hands.

Never be pressed near enough to catch the scent of her, beyond that which lingered in the room after she had gone, lavender and jasmine and roses and milled soap and clean skin and sunlight. 

Never bury his ruined face in her hair and lose himself in the essence of those soft auburn curls.

And certainly never to…taste her. To drink her song directly from her lips, to ply her warm mouth with his cool flesh, to share kiss after kiss, deeply, intimately, in true communion.

It could never be. She was an angel, and he must remain her teacher, her teacher.

Until that night, the night of her glory and his triumph and the incursion of that boy into the dressing room that had been their domain alone. 

When she begged him, begged him to enter at last, to grant to her his glory.

When he opened the mirror and beckoned her through, as he had sworn never to do.

And his oath, already aflame, flared to ash as he enfolded her, as he touched her and the scent of her filled his senses and dreams of tasting her honeyed lips filled his mind. 

He touched her and learned they fit together, as they were meant to.

She had first come to him as sound. And now, she was here, warm against him. With him. 

His music made flesh, his light in the darkness, spirit and voice in one combined.


End file.
